Prince Charles will have to avoid politics: analysts

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Prince Charles may see himself as a political dissident out to sway public opinion but once he ascends the throne silence should reign supreme, royal watchers said on Wednesday.

Queen Elizabeth's eldest son was plunged into a constitutional row this week when legal action he took to defend his privacy spectacularly backfired.

Instead of gagging a newspaper that had printed extracts from his diaries, Charles had to suffer the embarrassment of seeing a former aide telling the High Court of his propensity to dispense political advice to all and sundry.

In Britain, the royal family is expected to steer clear of political controversy.

The aide, Mark Bolland, said the 57-year-old prince however saw himself as "a dissident working against the prevailing political consensus."

Bolland, whose statement was put before the court during the hearing against Associated Newspapers, said Charles had boycotted a 1999 Chinese embassy banquet in London out of respect for the Dalai Lamai.

Bolland said the move was a deliberate snub. "The Prince's very definite aim in all this activity .... was to influence opinion. He saw that as part of the job of the heir apparent."

Charles hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons on Wednesday.

"He has turned a small legal battle about privacy into public questioning of his entire role," said royal correspondent Judy Wade. "He has opened up a huge can of worms."

"When he becomes monarch, he will have to shut up and that could be difficult for him. He is the sort of man who likes to speak his mind," she told Reuters.

KING-IN-WAITING

A fervent opponent of genetically modified foods and the "monstrous carbuncles" of modern architecture and a firm supporter of fox hunting, Charles is renowned for bombarding government ministers with his "black spider" memos.

Setting out his opinions in scrawled handwritten memos dotted with exclamation marks and underlinings, he has sought to carve out a meaningful role as heir to the throne.

But, with his mother in rude health at 79 and any talk of abdication firmly off the agenda, Charles may be a king-in-waiting for many years to come.

Royal biographer Robert Lacey said Charles "sees a clear distinction between what he has been doing as Prince of Wales and what he would do as king. I think that is mistaken.

"He has been overstepping the mark. His contrariness and views on the way the country are run are almost identical to those of his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, but the duke has the good sense to keep them strictly to himself," he told Reuters.

Lacey still believes Charles is fit to be king but said: "the court case in itself is recognition that he went too far in the past. Both now and in future, he is going to have to change."

But Penny Junor, author of "The Firm:The Troubled House of Windsor," sprung to Charles' defense.

"His interventions have been enormously beneficial," she said. "Without him, we might all be eating genetically modified crops whether we wanted to or not. He is extremely knowledgeable on a wide range of subjects -- more than most politicians."

She conceded that Charles may have overstepped the mark with his Chinese banquet boycott but said "his disgust with the regime was more than he could bear."

However Junor was confident discretion would prevail when Charles eventually becomes king. "I am sure he will draw in his horns," she said.